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Experiencing LIFE Today - November 17, 2015

2015Nov 17

COMMENTS

People should fall in love with their eyes closed. – Andy Warhol

In the modern Western world, you will probably live your whole life and never see anything like him: a leper. Peeling skin and past hope. Destitute and dead to society, rejected by the reality of this devastating disease that robbed him of his family, his friends, his world.

Leprosy was known as “death by inches.” The nerve endings would numb, ulcers open on the extremities causing decay. Imagine it: Rotting fingers that would fall off and blotches of skin all over your discolored, reeking body.

Nobody would have blamed Jesus for walking away from a leper – this unsightly mess, this ugly outcast, this unclean oddity. But He didn't.

When he came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. – Matthew 8:1-3

The outcast was loved by the Prince. Jesus said, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” But how has Jesus loved us? What does this unique “Jesus love” look like?

Jesus believes that inside every ugly body, and inside every beautiful body, and inside every average body, rests an eternal being. One day we will shed this shell, and spend eternity in one of two places, either with Him or without Him. He looks at every single person and says, “I don't care what you look like. I don't care about your economic status. You are an eternal being that needs ministering to.”

That's “Jesus love.” And that is how your love, in Him, should see the world – blind to physical, overlooking the outside, because that’s what Jesus does for us every day. That is how He loves you and that is how He can work through you to love others.

Loving Savior, thank You for accepting me, just the way I am. Your love is blind to all of my faults and ugly spots. I pray that You would work through me to love others deeply, looking past the surface. Amen.

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